Since Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi, 68, picked Moatassem-Billah, son number four, as his successor, his eldest son, Seif al-Islam, has schemed tirelessly to stay in the limelight and avoid being passed over as future potentate of this oil- and gas-rich nation. Seif's latest dodge, according to debkafile's intelligence sources, is the privately-launched Al-Amal (MV Almathea) for breaking Israel's naval blockade on the Gaza Strip. Awaited by the Israeli Navy Tuesday or Wednesday, Tripoli has officially disavowed the venture.

Feverish preparations are afoot in Tehran for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first visit to the Lebanese capital. Reporting this, debkafile's Iranian sources define the trip's purpose as a confrontational exercise to warn the US and Israel that full implementation of the tough new UN, US and European sanctions will provoke an Iranian war on Israel - waged from Lebanon. Ahmadinejad's trip is expected before September - with the Syrian and Qatari rulers in tow.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu keeps on vowing that Iran will not be allowed to establish an outpost on Israel's borders, but he has not lifted a finger to stop this menace ensconcing itself in the north - even though this is a gross violation of UN Security Council resolution 1701. Iran's proxy has therefore won the first round of its drive to recover the forward positions lost in the 2006 war and stands ready for the next.

The Obama-Netanyahu assurances of early direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have run into an unexpected delay: Mahmoud Abbas has succumbed to cancer and is preparing for major abdominal surgery.

Israel has finally moved on from its fractured relationship with Turkey. The Israeli Minister of Trade and Labor Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer's last-ditch bid to save the relationship by meeting Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutolu last week was a flop. But Israel has meanwhile welcomed Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou's interest in slotting Athens into Ankara's place as Israel's strategic partner in the region.

Israel's infrastructure minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer met Turkish foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu secretly in Zurich Wednesday, June 30 in an effort to alleviate the crisis in relations. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu knew about the encounter, but not Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who accused the prime minister of a betrayal of trust. debkafile reports that Ankara, whose anti-Israel campaign is in full flight, saw in the initiative a mark of Israeli government weakness.

Some US intelligence circles are now suggesting that the high-ranking Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh who died by an unknown hand in Dubai last January was not targeted for death but capture as a live hostage against the release of Gilead Shalit - along with half a dozen high-value Hamas operatives. The hostage plan was aborted when Al-Mahbouh died of the drug supposed to have doped him enough to bundle him out of the Dubai hotel.

CIA director Leon Panetta admits Iran has enough low-enriched uranium for two nuclear bombs that could be built in two years. In an interview Sunday, June 27, he virtually admitted that every effort to halt Iran's drive for a nuclear bomb had failed. Asked whether sanctions would work, he said: "Probably not." debkafile's military sources: Iran has reached this advanced stage largely because Israel's leaders have allowed Washington to hold them back from military action.

In his bid to sell the Syrian track to Obama, Netanyahu has adopted the main lines of a roadmap designed by the most pro-Syrian American diplomat, Fred Hof, which entails ceding most of Golan to Syria for an interim peace - though not its sources of water.

At his meeting with President Barack Obama on July 6, Israeli prime minister will propose trading in the stalled Palestinian track for a new peace initiative with Syria based on withdrawal from the bulk of the Golan Heights.

Barring surprises, the sea campaign against Israel's naval blockade of Gaza spearheaded by Turkeymay have run its course, debkafile's Middle East sources report. Beirut is close to abandoning the Lebanese convoy, Damascus has turned away requests to use its ports, Cyprus is negative and even the Iranian expedition appears snarled. In the last 24 hours, Israel won US, European and Mahmoud Abbas' support for its sea blockade after its cabinet approved the delivery of all civilian goods to Gaza over land.

US defense secretary Robert Gates reported Thursday, June 17 that the US had overhauled its missile defense plans following intelligence that Iran could fire "scores or hundreds" of short- and medium-range missiles against Europe -in salvoes rather than one or two at a time. The new US program, designed to protect NATO allies, uses sea and land-based interceptors. He did not mention Israel, but these figures mean it has fallen back sharply in the regional balance of strength, even before adding on the thousands of Hizballah rockets.

Netanyahu's peace initiative is irrelevant to the deepening Middle East crisis stemming from Turkey's eastward turn and ineffective for stemming the international onslaught Israel faces. But Netanyahu and Barak are sticking to Obama's course of inaction.

Ankara is leading a Muslim campaign for a worldwide boycott to strangle Israel. Jerusalem declares the Turkish IHH, a vital prop of its Islamic regime, a terrorist organization as dangerous as al Qaeda.DEBKA-Net-Weekly, in its latest issue out Friday, looks at the overt battle of wills, watched helplessly from Washington - but also into the shadows, where NATO's only Muslim member is locked in clandestine combat with the Jewish state.
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Riyadh re-ran its offer of an air corridor for an Israel strike on Iran's nuclear facilities (London Times), hoping to egg the US and Israel on to use it and recover their diminishing weight in the Middle East. Arab capitals are badly rattled by the thrusting partnership of the non-Arab Iran and Turkey and want to prod Washington and Jerusalem into action and out of their preoccupation with probing the flotilla incident. Jerusalem spurns the US demand to question Israeli servicemen as fueling the drive against Israel's legitimacy.

After four calls to change course from Gaza to Ashdod were ignored, Israeli troops boarded the Irish-flagged Rachel Corrie some 28 miles out to sea and sailed it to the Israeli port of Ashdod. The ship's pro-Hamas activists were determined to break the Israeli blockade. No violence or injuries were reported.
The US said the siege was unsustainable but urged Rachel Corrie to put in at Ashdod.

Amid his charm offensive for American Jewry, Obama lets Israel down in the international arena - especially in its war on terror, the menace of Iran's nuclear weapons and the international fallout from the Turkish flotilla episode.

The war projected between Israel and the Iran-led bloc of Syria, Hizballah and Hamas is suddenly overshadowed by Turkish-Israeli hostilities over a deadly Israeli commando raid on an aid flotilla from Istanbul. Against the US president Barack Obama's bid to bridge the rift, Turkish generals are drawing up plans to break Israel's Gaza blockade and avenge 9 deaths, while Israel is bound by its war on terror to thwart them. DEBKA-Net-Weeklyoffers details of their preparations on the brink. To subscribe to DEBKA-Net-Weekly, click here

To stop the flotilla crisis from spinning out of control, US president Barack Obama asked Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu to release all the remaining passengers without delay. His bid for Turkish restraint drew from PM Recep Erdogan the threat that if America did not punish Israel, Turkey would. Israel began evacuating diplomats' families from Turkey. Passengers said an al Qaeda-linked cell had imposed a quasi-military regimen aboard the Turkish Marmora.